4 tech trends that could bring back U.S. manufacturing and innovation

More than 20 years ago, MIT conducted a landmark study that revealed how the declining state of industrial productivity is the biggest challenge to building globally competitive businesses in the United States.

But we now live in an entirely different world. This month, the university is concluding a major two-year research effort that follows on the 1989 “Made In America” report, and the findings focus on a very different problem American business is facing: the “gaping holes” and “missing pieces” in the industrial ecosystem that make it difficult to bring new ideas to the marketplace.